


Incremental

by IAmANonnieMouse



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, background arthur/eames - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27513220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmANonnieMouse/pseuds/IAmANonnieMouse
Summary: “Would you willingly be in debt to Saito?” Dom asks.There’s a pause on the other end of the line, then Arthur says, “Please tell me this is a rhetorical question.”Dom winces, even though Arthur can’t see him.“Cobb. What the hell? You haven’t even been home for aweek!”“This isn’t my fault,” Dom says weakly.(Or: everyone's supposed to part ways after a job is completed, but Saito sends Dom a gift, and then another, and Dom takes forever to get a clue.)
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception), Dom Cobb/Saito
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	Incremental

**Author's Note:**

> I popped into the discord server and somehow got chatting about Saito and Cobb and then somehow THAT turned into me writing a Cobb/Saito fic. I don't even know anymore, I'm just TOO EASY, guys, smh.  
> (This ended up rather different from the original convo in the discord, but I'm happy with it so ^_^)

It starts slowly, subtly, in movements so small that it's months before Dom looks back and realizes how much things have changed. It makes sense, in hindsight—just as much as it made sense that Dom didn't notice back then, in those first months after the inception job. He was still looking at Saito and seeing his unflinching calm as Mal shot out Arthur's kneecap; his savage satisfaction in the helicopter with Nash, bloody and bruised; his unwavering determination to remove Fischer's empire from the playing field.

That's why it takes months before Dom realizes what's happening. Because he's been looking at Saito and seeing something completely different.

*

The first gift arrives only days after Robert Fischer's plane touched down in L.A. Dom is outside playing with James and Phillipa, trying to make up for the time he was gone with games and laughter. It's silly, he knows. He can never replace that time he lost. But he's always been a man who could achieve the impossible—he built a career on it, after all—so he's here, outside, chasing his children around the yard and hoping their laughter can erase the years they were apart.

The van pulls up the curb without any attempt at subtlety, but still Dom straightens and reaches for the gun that isn't there. Mal had hated the idea of guns where their children could ever find them, so she'd kept their weapons in a safe in their room. And that's where Dom put his gun when he got home a few days ago, after he hugged his children and cried and hugged them some more. 

But now, as he watches this van park directly in front of him and his children, he wonders if, once again, he should've left Mal in the past where she belongs.

A woman climbs out from the passenger side, and Dom realizes it's the postal service, and he's getting a package. She’s driving a normal van, not a kidnapper van, that is very neatly and clearly labeled USPS.

The woman disappears into the back and emerges a moment later with a large box on a dolly, which she wheels over to Dom. Then, she leaves, and returns with a second, equally large box.

"Sign here, please," the woman says briskly, extending a clipboard, and Dom has a moment of _Wait_ and _What if,_ because okay, she isn’t here to kill him or kidnap him, but he knows he hasn't ordered anything, and he may be done with dreamshare, but it isn't necessarily done with him. Those could be bombs, or—well, Dom isn't entirely sure what else they could be, but they could be _bad_ things. 

Then he sees the return address printed on one of the mailing labels, and he signs so quickly that his name is practically illegible.

The woman nods and climbs back into her delivery van and drives away, leaving Dom in his yard with two large boxes and two very curious children.

So, Dom opens a box.

His childrens' screams are deafening, and he manages to open the other box in an act of self-preservation, because James and Phillipa are like banshees right now, oh my _God_. He's still trying to figure out what happened ten minutes later, as he watches his kids run around with their new bicycles. Neither of them knows how to ride, but that isn’t stopping them from trying.

He finds the note by accident, when he paws through the packaging to break down the boxes. It's written on letterhead, in dark ink.

_Every child deserves some joy._

It isn't signed, but then again, it doesn't need to be.

*

“Would you willingly be in debt to Saito?” Dom asks.

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, then Arthur says, “Please tell me this is a rhetorical question.”

Dom winces, even though Arthur can’t see him.

“Cobb. What the hell? You haven’t even been home for a _week!”_

“This isn’t my fault,” Dom says, but it comes out weakly after the months and months and _months_ that he dragged Arthur from disaster to disaster. 

Arthur sighs loudly. In the background, Dom can make out the low murmur of someone else’s voice, then there’s the sound of a loud door crashing open and slamming shut. “What is it?” Arthur asks. “Who do I have to kill?”

“Nobody,” Dom says quickly. “He just… Saito sent the kids bikes.”

There’s another pause. “He _what?_ ”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like _him._ ”

“I like him fine,” Arthur says. “I just don’t like loose ends. Clients don’t exactly keep in touch with us after jobs, you know. And they definitely don’t mail your children gifts, because they aren’t supposed to know your fucking home address.”

Dom can feel Arthur’s blood pressure rising through the phone. “He isn’t going to send a hit team or anything.”

“As far as you know,” Arthur mutters.

“I just wanted a second opinion.”

Arthur sighs. “Keep the bikes. Call his assistant. Make an appointment.”

Dom blinks. “To talk about what?”

Arthur mutters something about patience and idiots. 

“What was that?” Dom asks.

“Ask him what he wants in return,” Arthur says, speaking slowly and clearly as if Dom’s a child. 

“Oh.” Dom nods. “Right. Okay. I’ll get right on that.”

“Great,” Arthur says.

“Are you, uh. How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“Call Saito. Let me know what happens.” And then Arthur hangs up on him.

*

Saito owns a home, several office buildings, and that second home for his mistress. Dom can recite all their addresses and their current tax evaluations in his sleep. When his flight lands, Dom finds a chauffeured car waiting for him, and the driver takes him to Saito’s nearest office, which is number three in Dom’s mental list of Saito-owned real estate.

“Please, sit, Mr. Cobb,” Saito says. They’re in a boardroom, with one of those intimidatingly long tables. Dom sits on one end, and Saito claims a seat two chairs to his left. “Are you here to reject my present?”

“No,” Dom says. “I have come to offer you something in return.”

Saito’s eyes flash with interest, and he leans an elbow on the table. “What is it you are proposing?”

“I don’t have many skills I can offer beyond dreamshare,” Dom admits. “So if you ever need some...discrete help, I am at your service.”

Saito smiles. “Seems dangerous.”

“What?”

“Offering me a favor like that.”

Dom hesitates. “My children love the bikes. Thank you.”

Saito inclines his head. “Fortunately, I already have something in mind, Mr. Cobb.”

Dom looks at him. “Who’s the mark?"

*

“Can I hire you?” Dom asks.

The line is silent so long that Dom pulls the phone away to make sure the call is still active.

“I didn’t think Arthur offered those kinds of services,” Eames muses.

“Eames? What—” Dom sighs. “Put Arthur on.”

“I don’t know if I’m comfortable exposing Arthur to such invasive questioning.”

“Eames.”

“In fact, I could go so far as to ask what your intentions are with my point man—”

“ _Your_ point man?”

“—and if I deem you worthy of my man’s attention, then perhaps I—”

There’s a scuffle, then a yelp, and Arthur says, “Hi, Cobb. What did Saito say?”

“He accepted my return offer.”

“Perfect. What was it?”

Dom winces. “I told him I’d do a job for him.”

Arthur hangs up the phone.

*

“What part of ‘ask him what he wants in return’ sounds like ‘offer to do a fucking job for him’?” Arthur demands.

Dom would feel guilty, except this is the fourth time today that Arthur has said it, and since he’s currently sitting in Dom’s living room with a full dossier already completed on the mark, Dom can’t take him too seriously.

“Thank you for doing this,” Dom says.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Arthur responds, and he hands over his research.

Dom flips through it, and says, “Who do you think I can pull in for this? Dee?”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “You’re working with me, Cobb. Me and Eames.”

Dom squints at him. “I didn’t mean—”

“You never do. Yet here we are.” Arthur stands and says, “I’m drinking all your coffee. Consider it payment for services rendered.”

Dom hesitates, then says, “So, Eames is your phone answering service now?”

Arthur says, “Voigt has a lot of security, and it looks like he’s been militarized by Euler. We’ll have to be careful.”

Dom turns back to the binder in his lap and says, “Okay. What do you suggest?”

*

Dom offers to mail the information to Saito, but Saito sends Dom a first class ticket to Japan instead. He flies straight out of Germany, promising Arthur that he won’t promise Saito any more extraction jobs, and meets the same chauffeur at the gate.

They go to a different office this time, one of the other buildings Saito owns. He’s escorted into Saito’s private office instead of a boardroom.

“Thank you,” Saito says, when Dom hands over the manilla envelope. He tucks it in a drawer without opening it, then folds his hands in front of him, staring intently at Dom. “I did not send you the bicycles in an attempt to force you into my services.”

Dom blinks. “I told you, I appreciate your generosity, but I didn’t ask for the gift, and I don’t like to leave debts unpaid.”

Saito hums. “Very well, Mr. Cobb. Your debt, as you say, is paid in full.”

“Thanks,” Dom says. He stands and walks out of Saito’s office and tells himself that they’re finished now, and that’s a good thing.

By the time he lands in L.A., he still isn’t sure he believes it.

*

The second gift arrives on the anniversary of the botched Cobol job. It’s been months, and Dom has finally convinced himself that Saito is done with him and he can move on with his life. He’s drowning in all those lovely milestones of fatherhood, and continuously ignoring pointed comments from Marie about his failings.

He still misses Mal, too, but he learned the hard way that running from that only does more harm.

The gift is in a small, nondescript envelope, buried between Dom’s taxes and electric bill. He shakes it first, then feels like an idiot and tears it open in one go.

Inside is a letter from UCLA, inviting him to be a professor of architecture. A smaller piece of paper is tucked inside the envelope, and it says, _I do not expect anything in return. But if you insist on seeing this as a debt, I will be in Los Angeles a month from today. We can meet then._

Dom holds the letter like it’s made of glass and tells himself that this isn’t something he should trust.

But he calls UCLA that afternoon, and begins the process of becoming a professor.

*

Saito chooses the meeting location, and Dom, like a good, seasoned criminal, doesn’t look it up before he arrives. This is how he ends up in a high-class restaurant while dressed in a polo shirt and jeans.

Luckily, Saito doesn’t seem to mind.

“I took the liberty of ordering,” he says when Dom sits down. “If you don’t mind.”

Dom shakes his head. “That’s fine. Sorry I’m late. James had a piano lesson.”

“I understand.”

The food arrives moments later, and Saito gestures for Dom to start eating.

“Thank you for the professorship,” Dom says. “I...don’t really know what to say.”

Saito finishes chewing his food, and tilts his head to the side. “I am not doing these things to keep you in my debt. I am thanking you.”

“For what?” Dom asks, squinting in confusion.

“For coming after me in limbo,” Saito says simply. “I could have stayed there until my mind withered away. But you followed me. And you reminded me of the thing I had forgotten.” He smiles slightly. “We were old men together. And I would like for us to be old together again.”

Dom looks at him. “What do you mean?”

Saito waves a hand. “I want you to have a good life. I want your _children_ to have a good life. You did what I asked, Mr. Cobb. You achieved the impossible. And you saved me when I was lost. I would simply like to repay the favor.”

“Dom,” he says awkwardly. “You can call me Dom.”

Saito smiles. “I know you needed me to make that phone call to let you return to your family. But I am not a man who appreciates waste. It would be foolish to help you return home, only for you to leave again when you are in need of employment.”

“So you got me a job,” Dom says.

Saito nods. “I hope it suits. I did some research on you, before I hired you and your team. You were a professor once before.”

Memories flash through Dom’s mind, of Mal sitting across from him in a staff meeting, late nights in her lab, early mornings hunched over models. 

“Yes,” he says distantly. “I was.”

Saito says nothing else, and instead returns to his dinner. After a moment, Dom follows suit.

*

Saito starts visiting L.A. more frequently. “With your help,” he explains, “I acquired a new business in the area.”

Dom doesn’t question it. He doesn’t want to question it. He’s in his second semester of teaching again, and he hadn’t realized how much he missed it. James has decided he wants to learn guitar, Phillipa wants to be a ballerina, and Marie has started to work _with_ Dom, not against him. 

He meets Saito for lunch or dinner almost every time Saito is in town. And he simply...doesn’t question it.

Then one afternoon, his doorbell rings. He’s up to his elbows in laundry, so James gets to the door before him, and screams, “Uncle Arthur!”

Arthur steps inside, James tucked in his arms and propped against his hip, a wide smile on his face. “You’ve gotten so big,” he says to James.

“I’m a big boy now!” James cries, and he pinches Arthur’s nose.

“Ah, and who is this lovely prima ballerina?” Eames says, and Dom looks up in time to see Eames crouch down in front of Phillipa, hand outstretched.

“Sorry to crash like this,” Arthur tells Dom. “But we were nearby, and I realized it’s been a while.” He gently puts James down and pulls Dom into a hug he isn’t sure he deserves, but he returns it with only a hint of desperation and tries not to think about how long it’s been since anyone has hugged him.

“It’s really good to see you,” he says honestly.

Eames grins. “Don’t worry, I’m just here to rob the Getty.”

“Eames,” Arthur says, with a sigh.

Dom takes their bags and sets them up in the guest room. He isn’t sure if he should apologize that they’ll need to share a bed, or if that’s something they’re used to doing, and he thinks it really isn’t his place to ask anymore, so he says nothing. They eat dinner and share stories, and Arthur hands James and Phillipa some presents then reads them their story before bedtime.

“He’s better at this than I am,” Dom says.

Eames glances at him. “He’s had more practice. He came here whenever he could while you both were on the run.”

Dom sighs. “I was terrible to him.”

Eames hums.

“I don’t deserve him as a friend.”

“Arthur doesn’t make sacrifices for just anyone,” Eames says. “You’re worthy, in his mind. Even if he did need a break from you when it was all over.”

Dom laughs self-consciously. “Yeah. I didn’t blame him.”

“It’s fine, now,” Eames says, and Dom takes him at his word.

*

Dom gets a text from Saito the following afternoon, and he sidles into the living room where Arthur is laying on the rug surrounded by building blocks, teaching James about paradoxes.

“Hey,” he says, “would you mind keeping an eye on them while I run out?”

Arthur glances at him. “What do you need? Where are you going?”

“It’s nothing,” Dom says quickly. “I just...will be gone for a little bit.”

Arthur’s eyes narrow.

“It’s Saito,” Dom says. “I’m meeting him for lunch.”

“Saito,” Arthur says flatly.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It’s a thing we do. I guess. Ever since the Voigt job. He bought some company out here in L.A., and we eat together when he’s around.”

“Why?” Arthur asks again.

“Because I went after him when he fell into Limbo,” Dom says. “That’s what he said when I asked him, at least.”

“You're the reason he fell into Limbo in the first place,” Arthur says, blunt as ever.

Dom shrugs.

“Fine,” Arthur says. “I’ll watch them. But you have some serious explaining to do when you’re back.”

*

Lunch is at a small cafe where nobody cares who they are. Dom has gotten used to ignoring the two bodyguards that are Saito’s shadow. Today, they’re sitting at the next table over, eating their own food while eyeing every customer like they’re a would-be assassin.

“Arthur and Eames are in town,” Dom says.

“How are they?” Saito asks.

“Good. I think.”

Saito arches his eyebrows. 

“I haven’t really asked. It felt weird.”

Saito hums. “Well, I have need of some...discrete assistance, if they are looking for a new job.”

“What’s the job?”

“A competitor is trying to force me out of my own market,” Saito says. “I need to find a weakness to exploit.”

Dom nods. “I’ll ask them.”

*

Dom talks them into taking the job by saying he’ll do the job himself if they won’t. Arthur glares and sighs and snarls, but he tells Dom to send Saito the fucking agreement, and stalks off to pout somewhere else.

“I want to go under,” he tells Eames when they’re alone. “I want to go with you.”

“We need someone to watch up top.”

“We can hire out for that like we always do.” Dom looks at him. “Mal isn’t in my dreams anymore.”

Eames just stares at him.

“Okay, she is. But she isn’t...stabbing people.”

“Or shooting out their kneecaps,” Eames suggests.

Dom winces. “It was my guilt that was feeding her. But I’ve come to peace with it now. She isn’t a threat.”

Eames looks at him consideringly. “We’ll do test runs. If she even looks at me or Arthur wrong, you’re staying topside.”

“Deal,” Dom says.

Two weeks later, they’re in Geneva, hooking up to a PASIV. Dom hears the familiar hiss, feels the familiar cool rush as Somnacin floods his veins, and then he’s under.

*

Somnacin has always been addictive. It’s one of those pesky side effects nobody ever mentioned when they first started. It takes away your natural dreams and alters your brain chemistry, and soon you’re spending every waking minute wishing you were asleep instead.

Dom had forgotten how quickly it gets its hooks into you.

It’s been four days since they wrapped up the job, and he’s trying not to drag out the PASIV tucked in the back of his closet. It’s an old model, one of the first he and Mal ever used. It’s an unnecessary risk.

But the next time he’s sitting across from Saito in a restaurant, he says, “Do you have another job?” and Saito arches a brow and gives him a name.

*

Months pass. Marie is yelling at him again. Eames is judging him. Even Arthur was yelling at him, up until he stopped taking Dom’s calls.

He’s in the Netherlands, but his internal clock is still five hours off. It’s his third job for Saito, and he hasn’t been home in six months.

He’s missed James’ birthday, and the anniversary of Mal’s death. Phillipa’s birthday is coming up in two days, and he’s already resigned himself to the tense phone call that’s going to take place.

Phillipa stopped listening to his excuses a long time ago, and he can’t really blame her.

This team is a hodgepodge of newbies and veterans. The newbies don’t care who they’re working with, and the veterans just want the money. Dom isn’t a fool; he knows Arthur reached out to everyone he could find and told them not to work with him. Eames keeps telling him to stop being a fucking arsehole and go the fuck home, but he isn’t listening. 

He can’t. He’s missed this too fucking much to just turn around and go home now.

They finish wiping down the place and hammering out the money details. Dom lets himself into his hotel room long after dark, and when he turns on the light, he finds Saito waiting for him.

“Mr. Cobb,” Saito says evenly. “You are supposed to be in Los Angeles.”

“Mr. Saito,” Dom says. “How did you find me?”

Saito arches his brows. “You told UCLA you are taking family leave. If you do not return their calls within days, they are going to fire you.”

“I know.”

“You know, and yet you are still here, and not with your children.”

“Saito—”

“I told you, many months ago, that I wanted your children to have a good life. This is not what I wanted.”

“You don’t have a say in my children’s lives.”

“You took on an impossible task just so you could go home and see them again,” Saito says. “And now, here you are. Running. But from what?”

“I’m not running.”

“You are in Amsterdam.”

“I just needed—”

“You wanted.”

Dom frowns. “I finished the job. I have the information you want.”

“I don’t care,” Saito says. “I want you to get in my car, take the plane ticket I hand to you, and fly home to your family. That is all I want from you, Mr. Cobb.”

“Dom,” he says quietly. “I told you to call me Dom.”

“Mr. Cobb,” Saito says, “I thought you were stronger than this.”

Dom flinches, and he closes his eyes, and says, “I thought I was, too.”

Saito stands and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Come home, Dom,” he says quietly. “Be a father. Live peacefully. And then someday, we can be old men together again.”

“Filled with regret, waiting to die alone,” Dom says.

“No,” Saito says. “Not anymore. Old men, filled with no regrets, who have lived a life they loved.”

Dom packs his things. He checks out of his hotel. He gets in Saito’s car. And he gets on the plane.

He’s halfway home when he realizes he doesn’t have a gift for Phillipa’s birthday. But Saito took care of that, too. The package is being delivered by that same woman in her USPS van as Dom arrives at home.

*

UCLA agrees to take him back, somehow. He takes James to guitar lessons, he takes Phillipa to karate _and_ ballet, and he grovels to Marie until she gets sick of hearing it and takes pity on him. Arthur still isn’t taking his calls, but after he tries to call for the tenth time Eames texts him, _He got sick of watching you be an idiot,_ and Dom realizes he’s going to have to beg forgiveness from more than just his mother-in-law and children.

He teaches his students about architecture. He builds models, draws paradoxes, and tries—really, actually tries this time—to be a good father. Months pass, then a year. Arthur answers his call at New Year’s, and Phillipa stops trying to karate-chop his legs off so he can’t keep leaving.

He visits Mal’s grave for the first time in years and only cries a little. He takes her totem with her and buries it in the soil.

Then, the third gift arrives in the mail. 

It’s been almost two years since the second gift—the UCLA invitation. Dom had almost forgotten how this ever started, how Saito quietly stayed on his radar once the Fischer job was finished.

But he thinks about it now, how it started with bicycles and ended in a hotel room in Amsterdam, and he berates himself for missing all the signs before, because he was too caught up in his own dysfunction. 

Saito can be subtle and quiet and patient, Dom knows this now. But he stubbornly kept thinking of Saito as a cutthroat businessman, and he doesn’t know why.

That’s a lie. He knows.

The third gift is in an envelope, but this one is thick and heavy. He carefully opens it, and three plane tickets fall out.

 _Take your family on a vacation,_ the note says. _Let them learn why you love to travel._

And Dom’s mind is spinning with memories from the last two years and the hidden messages buried in every word between them, so he packs his children’s bags and takes them to the airport.

*

The same chauffeur is waiting for him at the gate, driving the same car. He smiles kindly at James and Phillipa and carefully puts their luggage in the trunk.

But this time, he doesn’t take them to any of Saito’s properties. He drives and drives, and Dom’s children stare out the window in awe, and they finally stop outside a small home with a gorgeous view on the river.

The chauffeur leads James and Phillipa inside, while Dom stands for a moment and stares and thinks, for the first time, about the quiet promise embedded in the hope of them being old men together again.

His phone rings. 

“Thank you,” he says the moment he answers it. “For everything.”

There’s a brief pause. “You’re welcome, Dom,” Saito says. “I hope you will not consider this a debt.”

“No,” Dom says, with a new weight to his words. “No, I won’t. But I wouldn’t say no to another dinner with you.”

*

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I'm just writin' rarepairs nowadays :shrugs:


End file.
